Poetry, the red-headed step child of literature, glossed over by myself in high school and I'm sure plenty of others out there. It's just not a medium that connects with Americans, and that was before the advent of iPhones and TikTok to further distract us.
But why though? Poetry is short (generally, although some poems can be quite lengthy) and packs its messages into a concise and condensed package....in this day and age where attention spans are razor thin, that should be a good thing. The issue is...I just never understood poetry! I got the most basic levels of rhyme and meter, but what makes good poetry? Why are some poems better than others? I was always in it for the storytelling, and in a Harry Potter world I defaulted to the "Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked into Gringotts" type of storytelling than the dense bush of poetry. China actually has a vast expanse of poetry with famous poets like Li Bai and Du Fu, and my grandpa did me a great service to make me memorize some of the most famous poems back when I was like 7 years old (the best time to memorize things because they stick with you forever), so I have this one poem by Li Bai that's become my default, so rhythmically pleasing in Chinese to say but filled with messages.
Poems are also like famous songs in that they're lyrics....people love songs! Which aren't that much different than poems, except for the whole music part. Perhaps I'll join a poetry slam at some point to witness poetry in motion. Perhaps I'll discover some mystic secret about poems that can reveal why they have such a strong place in the history of writing. Until then, I just don't understand poetry yet. Maybe it's like fine wine (don't really like the test of alcohol personally), but maybe as I grow even older (I feel like I'm at a pretty ripe age already) I'll understand, kind of like understanding melancholy and bitterness along with the sweetness of life.
Segue to tonight's Final Jeopardy question, about a famous poet who was born in Maine. Difficult question, but one that should have been narrowed down to at least a few New England poets (known as the fireside poets) based on the year of 1813, and then go with the best guess of them around that time period, the incomparable WILLIAM WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. The guy should be the first poet every American thinks of (Europe has some famous ones like Lord Byron, Tennyson, and Coleridge, not to mention Sappho going in the way-back machine), but we Americans are more culturally conversant with Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and on a much more recent and "fun" level, Dr. Seuss (I do not like green eggs and poetry, Sam I am). But it's encouraging that poetry still survives, despite not being celebrated too often, but pulled out famously at presidential inaugurations (Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb" at Biden's inauguration comes to mind, as well as Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" at Clinton's inauguration). Glad to see a world without poetry is "The Road Not Taken."
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